You Must Be a Real Person to Write for This Blog

I’m thrilled that this blog has been graced by the words of contributing bloggers like Aaron Morrow, J.A. Rodriguez, Jason Townsell and so many others. They are professionals in the EHS world with valuable insight and advice to share.

Right now, for example, I’m busy editing a contributed article about confined space safety and a new blog post that compares EHS professionals to “magicians of eventually.” These are pieces written by EHS leaders who know what EHS Today is all about. They’re real experts with real stories and advice. In most cases, they came to us because they value our publication and want to lend their voices to the conversation. We love that. We always welcome more contributors like this and, in fact, recently put out a new call for guest blog submissions.

But perhaps I should have stressed that we want actual people who have a tale to tell or knowledge to share. What we don’t want is content from nameless, faceless sources, commercial content or information much too general for our readership of EHS leaders.

I’m usually pretty quick to spot a spammer or someone who’s blatantly out for personal gain with no interest in furthering the discussion of occupational safety and health. But I get hundreds of emails every day and sometimes, I won’t know until I actually receive a submission that it’s wildly inappropriate for our magazine, blog or Web site.

As the editors of EHS Today, Sandy and I are responsible for editing, shaping and polishing the contributed work, whether it’s a five-page feature in the magazine or a 300-word blog post. This is our job. It’s what we’re good at, and it’s what we’re here to do. If we edit a few hundred words out of your piece, or add a jazzy headline or rearrange a few paragraphs, that’s not a bad thing, and it doesn’t mean we didn’t like your work. We’re just molding it so it can better serve our readers. Occasionally, we may ask our contributors to make some edits, submit a rewrite, or take a different approach. That’s all part of our working relationship, too, and I have to say our contributors are some of the most gracious and professional that I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

The bottom line is we’re more than happy to help our contributors create the best pieces we can for EHS Today. But what we won’t do is publish material on par with “content farm” articles. I like looking at our blog and knowing the contributor photos show real people willing to lend their voices to this conversation – and I’d like to keep it that way. No spambots allowed!

Don’t let any of this intimidate you. If you’re a real, breathing person who is tied in some way to the world of EHS – whether your work or experience relates to occupational safety, ergonomics, wellness programs, employee morale and productivity, environmental regulations, compliance, personal protective equipment, training, distracted driving, industrial hygiene or more – we’d love to hear from you. Write to me at laura.walter@penton.com and I’ll send you our blogging guidelines.

Until then, have a good weekend – and keep the spambots at bay.

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